People with Mental Disorders Risk an Early Death

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People with mental disorders are two times more likely to die
early than their peers in the general population — and not just
because of factors like suicide, a new study suggests.

More than half of the early deaths analyzed in the study were
blamed on natural causes, such as acute and chronic illnesses
like heart disease.

"I think it's an important study that's drawing attention to the
general health risk that's associated with a range of psychiatric
disorders," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at
Columbia University, who wasn't involved in the study. [ 5
Controversial Mental Health Treatments ]

There are hundreds of studies going back decades that produced
data on the mortality rates of people with mental health
disorders, such as
schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. A
group of researchers, led by Elizabeth Walker, of Emory
University in Atlanta, recently reviewed this massive body
literature.

Using data from 148 studies conducted in several countries,
Walker and colleagues found that the death rate for people with
mental disorders was, on average, 2.22 times higher than that of
people in the general population. (Mortality rates usually refer
to the deaths that occur during a specific study's time frame.
The studies covered in the new analysis varied widely in length —
from 1 to 52 years, with a median of 10 years.)

Overall, people with mental disorders potentially lost a decade
of their lives, the analysis showed.

"When people think about the risk of death for people with mental
health problems, they often focus on suicide because
it's so tragic and traumatic," Olfson told Live Science. But
people with mental health disorders face many other health
problems — such as high rates of smoking, poor diet, lack of
exercise and a lack of medical care — that can lead to an early
death, Olfson said.

" Rates
of smoking have come down for the general population,
but that hasn't been true for people with serious mental health
problems," Olfson said. "It's factors like that that are
increasing the gap."

Indeed, about 67 percent of the deaths analyzed in the study were
blamed on natural causes, while about 17 percent were due to
unnatural causes, such as suicide and accidental injury. (The
rest of the deaths in the study had unknown causes.)

The researchers wrote that
suicide-prevention efforts are still crucial for
high-risk populations with mental disorders. But efforts to
reduce the "excess burden of mortality" among people with mental
health issues also need to look at ways to prevent deaths that
result from health problems like cardiovascular disease. That
might mean addressing behavioral and lifestyle factors, access to
health care, and social factors like poverty.

The study was published online today (Feb. 11) in the journal
JAMA Psychiatry.